"Art Now and Then" does not mean art occasionally. It means art NOW as opposed to art THEN. It means art in 2018 as compared to art many years ago...sometimes many, many, MANY years ago. It is an attempt to make that art relevant now, letting artists back then speak to us now in the hope that we may better understand them, and in so doing, better understand ourselves and the art produced today.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Growing up as a child in a rather "art deprived" area of southeastern Ohio, I tended to soak up even the most minor elements of art wherever I encountered them. One such venue was the Morgan County Fair. I stood for hours watching a traveling hack artist paint formula landscape scenes from memory. Another artist used a flaming torch and slender glass rods to create, delicate, free-standing, glass, table ornaments (usually animals of some kind) right before my eyes. The work of Wendy Williams (below) is quite similar to the "county fair" glass art I first encountered. Today it's sometimes called "flamework" art. Years later, when I began to do art shows myself, a friend of mine named Dale Moore used an abrasive wheel to cut designs into glassware. The Steuben Art Glass piece, The Tower Exhibition (left) by Eric Hilton, is an example of this technique. Dale's glass cutting wasn't what I'd term sculpture, and he was more artisan than artist, but until the last few years, they were about my only exposure to the fine art of creative glass design.
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Swimmer, Wendy Williams

I think it may have been on a cruise ship that I first encountered the incredible creations in glass of the renown Dale Chihuly. Later, my wife and I spent several hours at his exquisite museum in Seattle located near the base of the Space Needle. Whether displayed inside, or outside in a garden setting among the plants and flowers his work so often emulates, the only word which comes to mind is spectacular. Chihuly, more than any other glass artist, has raised the medium to a level on a par with (or exceeding) every other traditional sculpture medium.

Copyright, Jim Lane

A sample of the Chihuly Museum in Seattle.

Just look for the tall thingie with the revolving restaurant on the top.﻿

Honeybees Swarming a Floral Hive Cluster, Paul J. Stankard

However, speaking of glass as an art medium, opens up a very wide scope of ways and means. Besides cut glass and flamework mentioned above, there's also blown glass, molded glass, shattered glass, stained glass, sliced glass, free-formed glass, and two or three more which defy simple description. They are the techniques so new even the artists find them difficult to categorize, while some are as old as glass itself. Archaeologists believe the Phoenicians first developed techniques for making glass. Probably some Phoenician beach bum built a very hot bonfire on a sandy shore only to be amazed at what he found once the embers cooled. The nearby Assyrians and the Egyptians picked up on the idea while the Greeks and Romans perfected many of glassmaking techniques we still see today in what's sometimes called art glass or studio glass (above, right). Some of these very old ways and means can still be observed on the Venetian Island of Murano, where I visited a couple years ago and watched one-of-a-kind pieces being made by hand the old fashioned way. The shop window below provides a glimpse of such items in the one-hundred to one-thousand euro range.

Copyright, Jim Lane

No, it's not an abstract painting, though some of the individual pieces of Murano glass could be called that.

Seated Figure, Daniel Arsham,shattered glass.

During the Medieval period, glass and art pretty much meant stained glass as used in church windows to help spread the Gospel visually to the mostly illiterate masses meeting for morning mass. Whether a blazing sunrise or a halogen glow, Glass has always been married to light, the brighter, the more intense, the more beautiful. Today stained glass is not limited to windows or a two-dimensional format. The work of Lyle London and Richard Altman, collaborating on their 15-inch Triple Helix-Completed (below) demonstrates the versatility of glass in its natural (that is to say, flat) state supported by a soldered or welded metal framework. The work below is a high-dichroic glass and polished stainless steel suspended sculpture at Renown Health Care, Tahoe Tower lobby, in Reno, Nevada. Daniel Arsham uses shattered glass as his sculpture medium as seen in his Seated Figure (left) in which each tiny shard is painstakingly melted into the figural mass. This one would appear to be made from shattered Coca-Cola bottles.

Triple Helix-Completed, Lyle London with Richard Altman. It comes with its own variable lighting system.

The work of Lino Tagliapietra, one of the best (if not the best) glass artist in the world today, demonstrates that even the oldest art techniques, such a blown glass, coming from a master of the art, can result in amazing beauty either taken alone or when grouped as seen in his Installation below. A former Murano artist, Tagliapietra today has his own glass studio, his pieces costing in the range of...if you gotta ask, you can't afford them.

Installation, Lino Tagliapietra

Copyright, Jim Lane

One of the "pitfalls" of collecting glass sculpture.

Falling under the relatively new category of glass sculpture known as "sliced glass," we see the work of Harvey Littleton with his Yellow Ruby Sliced Descending Form (bottom), from 1983, in which free-formed glass is sliced in various ways to create multi-unit sculptural arrangements. The French jewelry maker, Rene Lalique, working during the height of the Art Deco era, is most famous for his use of glass as a replacement for various metals in casting sculpture. His tabletop pieces, (similar to the one below, left) have long been collectors items despite the fact they were factory produced, each piece numbering in the hundreds. From one of the oldest methods of sculpting glass to one of the newest, we see the work of Peter Newsome and his Wind Song Glass (below, right), in what I'd call "layered glass." I have a small piece made in this manner intended to form a glass cactus (left). Unfortunately, after my wife accidentally knocked it off a shelf, it has lost some of its crystal charm.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

At Breakfast, 1914, Zinaida Serebriakova depicting three of her four children, Alexander, Evgenyi, and Tatiana.

Until the past hundred years or so, it has been difficult to reference women artists whose work stands up well next to their male counterparts. Of course there are many reasons for this, most having to do with social restriction foisted upon women having to do with education, prudery, tradition, stereotypes, and a dozen other lesser factors. However with the coming of the 20th-century, for better or worse, many of these limitations began to wither away. Still, their meager numbers since then tell a story of the great difficulty as women have striven to gain the same recognition as men in the art world, and the still greater challenges as to their success in the general world at large. We might start with Mary Cassatt and run through a list of every major female artists in the interim, ending with Jenny Saville and Tracey Emin, yet still not come close to the number of male artists who attained exceptional recognition during that time. But, with each nation's list of women artists there has to be a "first." Yet many who seem to know art would have great difficulty in "naming names" where women are concerned. Nowhere would this be more the case than in the almost totally male dominated world of Russian art. Fine, let me put forth a name that should be at the head of any such list of female Russian artists--Zinaida Serebriakova.

Okay, it's not an easy name to remember. Forget the name for a moment, forget she was a women, even, just look at her work. It would be patronizing to say she "painted like a man," but not knowing her gender, we'd not be likely to consider the fact that she wasn't a man. In fact, all you'd have to do is count the number of female nudes in her life's work to quickly dismiss any preconceived notion having to do with her gender. I was amazed. She painted far more female nudes (left) than any female artist I've ever encountered. And lest you question her sexual preference, keep in mind she was married for fourteen years, bore four children, three of whom can be see having breakfast (top). Her youngest, Catherine, is seen depicted in Katya in the Kitchen (below) from 1923, juxtaposed next to a 2005 photo of her seen among her mother's paintings in Paris.

Katya in the Kitchen, (left) 1923, Zinaida Serebriakova. Catherine Serebriakova among her mother's works in Paris, 2005 (right).

Boys in sailor's striped vests, 1919, Zinaida Serebriakova

Zinaida Lanceray was born in 1884 to a well-to-do artistic family living in Kharkov (eastern) Ukraine. Her father, Yevgeny Lanceray was a sculptor, her grandfather, Nicholas Benois, was a famous architect, her uncle, Alexandre Benois, a famous painter. Her mother and sister were talented amateur artists while her brother, Nicolay, like his uncle, became an architect. Another brother, Yevgeny Lanceray, was a master of monumental painting and graphic art during the Soviet era. After graduating from "gymnasium" (high school) around 1900, Zinaida attended a women's art school from 1901 to 1905 while also finding time to study in Italy and Paris for a year. In 1905 Zinaida Lanceray married Boris Serebriakova (below), using her married name from that point on in signing her work. The Boys in Sailor's Striped Vests, (left) from 1919 are probably her teenage sons.

Portrait of Boris Serebriakova, 1908, Zinaida Serebriakova

Portrait of her son Alexander, 1925, Zinaida Serebriakova

Had in not been for the political and social upheavals of the Russian Revolution starting in 1917, the family might have, as they say, "lived happily ever after." However, two years later, Boris Serebriakova died of typhus while imprisoned by the Bolsheviks. Left a widow with four children, an ailing mother, and no income other than her art, the family came close to starvation. Serebriakova's most tragic painting, House of Cards (below), from this period depicts her four orphaned children. After a time, Serebriakova found work at the Kharkov Archaeological Museum, where she made pencil drawings of the exhibits. A year later, she was allowed to move her family to her grandfather’s apartment in Petrograd. There she was able to employ her talents with the state theater. Her older daughter, Tatiana, took up ballet to help support the family.

House of Cards, (early 1920s), Zinaida Serebriakova, her four childrenwith the symbolic figure of her dead husband in the foreground.

Portrait of a Ballerina Muriel Belmondo, 1962, Zinaida Serebriakova

It wasn't until 1924 that their situation improved much. In that year, Serebriakova received a mural commission in Paris, allowing her to leave the Soviet Union, though it meant leaving her children behind. Upon completion of the mural, she found she could not return to Russia. Eventually, she was able to arrange passage for her two youngest children to join her in Paris. It would be another thirty-six years before she would again see the two older ones. During her years in Paris, Serebriakova was successful to such a degree she was able to travel to Morocco and other areas of northern Africa where she painted numerous scenes (below) of Arab women in their ethnic clothing (and without it). It wasn't until 1966, that some two-hundred of her paintings were finally exhibited in Kiev, Leningrad, Moscow, and other Soviet cities. She was often compared favorably to Renoir and Botticelli. Her last dated painting, Portrait of a Ballerina, Muriel Belmondo (left) is from 1962. She died in Paris, in 1967, undoubtedly the most important woman artist to come from Russia during the entire 20th-century.

The Market in Pont L`Abbe, 1934, Zinaida Serebriakova

Shopping Cart with Sardines, 1930, Zinaida Serebriakova,not one of her more appetizing efforts.

Art and war are antithetical. So, in large part are war and artists. Though a considerable number of artists have died in various conflicts throughout history, more often artists tend to have the good sense to flee wars. This fact of historic life had a great deal to do with America, New York in particular, becoming the art capital of the world during the years since World War II. Yes, the war caused the "flight rather than fight" phenomena, but it was the willingness of the U.S. government to welcome this artistic brain drain to our shores as much as any other single factor. The list is surprisingly long and the names of the so-called "exile artists" arriving between the years 1939 and 1942 surprisingly familiar. One of the first of these art refugees to arrive in New York was the Swiss-born surrealist painter Kurt, Seligmann, whose La Ronde (The Round Dance, below from around 1940, was painted after he came to New York. Seligmann, abetted financially by the wealthy heiress, Peggy Guggenheim in Europe (who was buying up Modern Art like there was no tomorrow), arranged the group photo (above) with its names and faces, which reads like a "who's who" of Modern Art.

La Ronde (The Round Dance) ca. 1940, Kurt Seligmann

Borealis Efflorescence, 1941, Kurt Seligmann

The occasion was an exhibition titled "Artists in Exile" at the Pierre Matisse Gallery (the youngest son of Henri Matisse) in New York. The photo (top) may have been the most interesting and lasting "work of art" from the entire show (many pieces are now lost). First of all, the artists spoke various different languages (though mostly French). Many had never met before, and those who had, were not necessarily on speaking terms. As much as anything else, the show was an excuse to get these European pioneers of Modern Art out of Europe, out of harms way, and into a safe environment conducive to their creative efforts. Though they were not always compatible with the post-war New York School, without them, it's quite possible there would have been no New York School. Many of those pictured found jobs teaching in various art schools in and around the city. They were the "old guard;" if not always the teachers, then at least the inspiration, for later artists such as Pollock, de Kooning, dancer, John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and any number of lesser-knowns from the 1950s and early 1960s. Seligman's single contribution to the "Artists in Exile" show was Borealis Efflorescence (above, right), from 1941.

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The Carnaval, Kurt Seligmann

Kurt Seligmann was born in 1900, the son of a successful furniture store owner in Basel, Switzerland. As was common at the time, his parents expected him to "join the firm," which he tried, unhappily, to do. Eventually, they acquiesced in his becoming at artist, financing his studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva. Upon graduation around the mid-1920s, Seligman left for Paris where he reunited with an old friend from Geneva, sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Through him Seligmann met Hans Arp and Jean Helion, who admired his sinister, biomorphic paintings and invited him to join their group, Abstraction-Creation Art Non-Figuratif. As a result, during the 1930s Seligmann's work began to take on a more baroque aspect, with "animated" prancing figures in his paintings accompanied by festoons of ribbons, drapery, and heraldic paraphernalia. Seligmann's The Carnaval (left), is an example from this period.

Untitled, 1940. Kurt Seligmann

Herold, Kurt Seligmann

In 1935, Seligmann married well. Her name was Arlette Paraf, the granddaughter of the founder of the Wildenstein Gallery, which had locations in Paris, London, and New York. Together they traveled extensively, first around the world during a year-long honeymoon, then to the United States and British Columbia to satisfy their interest in American ethnic art. In 1937, Seligmann was accepted as a formal member of the Surrealist group in Paris by André Breton, who collected his work and included him in Surrealist exhibitions. In September 1939, Seligmann came to New York, ostensibly for an exhibition of his work being held at the Karl Nierendorf Gallery. Once here, however, with his Surrealist friends still in Europe being especially targets of the Nazis, Seligmann began a concerted effort to bring them to safety. His untitled work (above) is from around 1940.

Sabbath Phantoms, Mythomania, 1945. Kurt Seligmann

The History of Magic and the Occult, 1948, Kurt Seligmann

Seligmann's art reached maturity during the 1940s in the United States, where he did his best work. He and Arlette lived in Manhattan during this period, then later acquired a farm north of the city in the hamlet of Sugar Loaf, Orange County, New York. As the Surrealists' expert on magic, Seligmann also wrote a history of it, The Mirror of Magic (left). Mythology was always an element in the fascinating, turbulent imagery of his "dance macabre" paintings. Seligman's Prometheus (below), from 1946, is one such example. After the war, Seligmann's work began to be exhibited widely and acquired by museums throughout the United States and Europe. He taught for many years at Brooklyn College and various other schools in New York City. Unfortunately, the changing nature of the New York art world, as it embraced Abstract Expressionism, caused critics to relegate his work to the past, his paintings perceived as passé. His The Balcony III (bottom), from 1958, is typical of his late work. Seligman retired to his farm in 1958. It was there he died of an accidental, self-inflicted, gunshot wound in January 1962.

Prometheus, 1946, Kurt Seligmann

How many lives and careers Seligmann may have saved through his efforts to bring the elite of the Surrealist art movement to New York during the war years is, of course, problematical. The same is true in terms of his influence upon the movement and later, Abstract Expressionism as a result of his teaching efforts. What is less so, however, is the example of how one man's concerted efforts likely altered the course of Modern Art in America.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

It's not often that I come upon a type of art that has, it would seem, completely died out. Back during the 1600s, in the "low" countries of Belgium, Holland, and the Netherlands, there flourished a type of art called "garland painting." The closest thing we have today would be a Christmas wreath, and even at that we tend to prefer the real (or artificial) thing, except for clip art and Christmas cards, over paintings. However, this type of work from the Dutch "Golden Age," had nothing to do with Christmas other than indirectly, as seen in the fact they often encircled a painted image of a Madonna and Child. There were no evergreens, no pinecones, no poinsettia, no dusting of frost, no ribbons, bells, nor whistles. There were lots of roses and other floral embellishments usually without regard for their individual growing seasons. Their circular arrangement around a religious image or portrait served as little more than a glorified picture frame, redundant in that the whole painting had its own picture frame. In checking the Internet, I could find no modern-day artist pursuing anything remotely similar to the work of the Flemish painter, Daniel Seghers.

Flower Garland, Daniël Seghers

Daniel Seghers, 1661, Gulden Cabinet, Cornelis de Bie

There remains today a plethora of floral painters, make no mistake about that; but they tend to be artist who have taken to rendering "permanent" flower arrange-ments--bouquets set, either in their natural environments or arranged in a vase on a stylized surface. The work of Daniel Seghers and others were basically still-lifes of the tromp l'oel variety and were always depicted on some kind of dark, vertical surface (causing the buds and blossoms to take on a kind of glow.) Some were painted from life, while others, even in the same painting, were apparently added from the artist's familiarity, having painted them at one time or another in season. Roses predominated, but this being Holland and the Netherlands, Tulips were also popular, as well as daffodils, buttercups, chrysanthemums, lilies, irises, and several other types going well beyond my meager ability to identify such things (top).

A Garland Of Flowers Surrounding The Coronation Of The Virgin, Jan Brueghel (the elder)

Virgin and Child with Infant St John in a Garland of Flowers, 1630s, Jan Brueghel (the younger)

This type of work developed from the paintings of Jan Brueghel (the elder), under whom Seghers studied, though Brueghel's work (above) never matched the lively, more natural painting efforts of his student. If Virgin and Child with Infant St John in a Garland of Flowers (left) is any indication, Brueghel also seems to have trained his son in the art of garland painting. Seghers apparently had his own flower garden. But then, so did about everyone else at the time (the low countries went "flower crazy" during the 17th-century). Seghers took generously from his ready supply of blooms and likely found the need to replace them from time to time as he meticulously painted each blossom at a pace much slower than their tendency to wilt. Keep in mind, these were not arrangements stuck in water but attached to a vertical surface around a central open area.

Garland with Virgin, 1645-46, Daniel Seghers

The center of interest presented a problem to such artists. No matter how good they might be at painting flowers, they were seldom good at much else. The art market in this area of western Europe was almost unbelievably specialized, to a degree we can hardly imagine today. Thus, garland painting involved another factor we seldom see today--collaboration. The garland painter did the background and the flower arrangement, then employed, or sold the work, to other artists who very often added images in the middle. Garland paintings were also seen as appropriate for portraits of recently deceased loved ones (untimely death being a frequent occurrence in every family at the time). Also to be found in such collaborations were the occasional landscape, nude mythological figure, or non-floral still-life.

San Ignacio in a Garland of Flowers, Daniel Seghers, unusual for its use of browns and the heart-shaped configuration.

Daniel Seghers was born in Antwerp around 1590. The family was originally Catholic but converted to Calvinism after the death of Seghers' father about 1601, when his mother moved to Utrecht. It was there that Seghers came to study under Brueghel. Around 1614, now a young man in his twenties, Daniel Seghers converted back to Catholicism and began studying for the priesthood in the Jesuit order. Two of his garland paintings can be seen in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula where he took his priestly vows around 1525-26. After a two-year hiatus in Rome, Seghers returned to Antwerp where he continued to paint garlands of flowers (above) until his death in 1661 at the age of seventy-one.

Virgin of Guirnalda, Peter Paul Rubens with Jan Brueghel

A Still-life of Flowers in a Glass Vase,Daniel Seghers

Garland painting appears to have been something of a 17th-century fad (if you can call one-hundred years a fad). Besides Brueghel, evidence indicates Seghers also collaborated with Peter Paul Rubens and may have, in fact added garlands to already completed paintings by Rubens and others. It's seems likely Seghers also painted flowers in a number of more traditional still-life arrangements as evidenced by his A Still-life of Flowers in a Glass Vase (right). In any case, Seghers' work was quite collectible at the time, his services bringing a respectable sum for a still-life painter. However floral painting evolved, coming "off the wall" and into the vase in the centuries to follow. I could find no such art painted during the Victorian 19th century and precious little during the hundred years before. It became a dying art. Today, it would seem to be a dead art.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

All too often, as we think about the world of art both now and in the past, we tend to think of New York and maybe a couple other American cities on this side of the Atlantic, then Paris and London plus maybe another couple cities on the other side. These art hubs are important, but they're not all important. Even though the whole art universe seems top revolve around them, they make up more than one-forth to one-third of that world. Virtually every developed nation in the world has its own art market, its own art culture, its own roster of famous artists both "now and then." So, why is our focus so narrow? I've, no doubt, been as guilty as any of the art myopia. Speaking as a self-confessed guilty party, I think the answer is that it's simply easier to think and write about a limited international art world than one that's all-encompassing. How can you write about today's art world when (among others) you would have to include Portuguese art, Egyptian art, Turkish art, Uruguayan art, Australian art, Chinese art and Brazilian art...such as that of Lasar Segall?

Lasar Segall self-portraits, (left) 1920s?, (top) 1909, (right) 1927.

Man with the Violin, 1909, Lasar Segall

Each country's art is important even if the quantity and quality seems minimal in the larger scheme of things. Simply put, you can't lump all these different nationalities into generalities without making a list of exceptions and conditions so long as to make the whole endeavor senseless. The answer is to delve into each one separately then associate it with its international aspects. Lasar Segall may be considered to have been a top Brazilian artist, but he did not receive his art training in Brazil...he wasn't even born in Brazil. He was born in Vilnius Lithuania on July 21, 1891. He studied art in Germany--Berlin and Dresden. Man with the Violin (left) from 1909 is typical of his student work. He would have been about eighteen at the time. It wasn't until around 1912-13 that Segall first visited Brazil and not until 1923 did he move there permanently to become a naturalize Brazilian citizen. He died there in 1957, so it was only the final thirty-four years of his sixty-six years (only about half his life) that Segal could be called a Brazilian artist. Once you get out into the realm of the "orbiting satellites" of the bi-polar Anglo-European art universe, you find that sort of thing happening all the time. It's little wonder writers and historians, all too often, don't want to deal with it. It's also a reflection of the fact that their readers don't want to either.

The Eternal Wanderers, 1919, Lasar Segall

Segall first went to Brazil because three of his siblings lived there. He didn't stay long. By 1914 he was back in Dresden creating etchings and lithographs for book illustrations. He was still painting in an Expressionist style. In 1919 Segall founded the Dresdner Sezession Gruppe along with Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Otto Lange and other. Segall's exhibition at the Galery Gurlitt received multiple awards. Yet successful as he was in Europe, Segall had been greatly influenced by his short time in Brazil. The visit began to transform both the style and content of his work. The visit to Brazil left Segall with a strong impression of South American art, causing him to return to Brazil yet again.

The Sickness Room, 1921, Lasar Segall

Dor, Lasar Segall

If Brazil had a lasting influence upon Segall's work, equally important was that of Picasso's Cubism. Segal moved effortlessly from Impressionism to Expressionism (right) to Cubism (above), and finally to a sort of amalgamation of all of these (top). As so often happens when a artists have difficulty making a name, making a living, and carving a niche for themselves in a major art center, rather than compete, he or she moves out to the art hinterlands hoping to go from a "small fish in a big pond" to a "big fish in a small pond." I this case, though Brazil was a big country, it's art world was quite limited. Segall settled right in the middle of it--Sao Paulo. There his work was far more controversial than it had been in Paris, as he concentrated on images attacking prostitution and exploding the rancid night life of Rio de Janeiro's Mangue district (right). Later as Europe erupted in war, Segall turned his attention to similar horrific images depicting a new kind of lethal combat occurring when men and machines unite both to hasten the pace of war and broaden its scope. His War (below), from 1937 is one such image.

War, 1842, Lasar Segall

Pogrom, 1937, Lasar Segall

Even for artists far removed from actual combat and long past the years vulnerable to active duty, (as was Segall's situation) war has a profound effect on the psyche. The grotesque desecration of human flesh is but one of them. There's also the psychological impact Segall explores in his 1937 Pogrom (left) of the dead and dying civilian victims of world wars. Segall was Jewish. In the years following the war, as Brazil catapulted into the 20th-century, Segal floated to the top of that country's vibrant, but limited art world, concentrating on sculpture as much as painting. His Three Youths (below) dates from 1939, but was not cast in bronze until 2000. After the artist's death in 1957, Segall's home was turned into a museum (bottom) where his work, both painting and sculpture, comes together to form a major chunk of what has become the Brazilian Modern Art.

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Each chapter of Art THINK contains from four to twenty-one relatively short essays on different aspects of learning to think like an artist. Originally written for an artists' online discussion group, these "ArtyFacts" (as they were first called) can be bitten off, chewed, and digested in as little as fifteen minutes. Some items are light and fluffy-brain candy. Some are snack food for thought. Some are downright chewy. And, a few are (gulp) stick-in-your-throat fruit-cakey. They employ humor, irony, a gentle dose of art history, common sense, conventional wisdom, and good old school-of-hard-knocks experience.

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All text content is copyrighted, please do not use in any form without written permission. Most photos, except those by the author, are in the public domain unless the artist is still living or died after 1947.